Friday, January 7, 2011

Your designer baby?

If you could design the physical phenotype of your child in perfect detail what characteristics would you most want to:
change?
retain?

I would make my kids taller (I'm average at 5' 10")

I would like my kid to have symmetrical nostrils (Mine are different sizes.)

I would like my kid to develop earlier (I went through puberty 3 years late.  I should discuss in another post.)

What to retain is tougher.  I'm pretty good in many ways but am in no way perfect.  If one makes their offspring perfect, then does any of them remain?  If little to none of one's DNA remains, what is the evolutionary incentive to reproduce?

I had not thought about the possibility that people have another vector on which to determine their genetic persistence, how much and which DNA does one want to persist and at what probabilistic reproductive cost to the other DNA of theirs?

How does an individual value DNA persistence?   Is each allele valued equally?  The ability for one to be recognized as offspring?  And recognized by which scent?  Or which characteristics?

Help?

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